Editorial: A Hall of Shame baseball brawl

Tuesday

Jul 29, 2008 at 12:01 AMJul 29, 2008 at 3:32 AM

Of all the scenes broadcast to the planet about Peoria, metaphor for Midwestern values, the baseball brawl involving Peoria's Chiefs at a game last week in Dayton, Ohio, would not have been our first choice.

Of all the scenes broadcast to the planet about Peoria, metaphor for Midwestern values, the baseball brawl involving Peoria's Chiefs at a game last week in Dayton, Ohio, would not have been our first choice.

If you haven't seen it on TV, it's all over YouTube — the benches emptying after the managers got into it; Chiefs pitcher Julio Castillo firing a baseball at players in Dayton's dugout, only to miss and allegedly hit a 44-year-old fan in the face, sending him to the hospital; the melee that ensued, fists flying; the 17 temporary ejections that followed.

It was ugly, no other way to describe it.

Castillo, 21, was jailed and charged with felony assault. It's difficult to quarrel with the decision to prosecute. For these players the baseball diamond is their office. We can think of precious few workplaces in America where such violence would be tolerated. Just because you're on a field of play does not excuse you from adherence to a civilized code of conduct.

Castillo, a native Dominican in Peoria but a month, already has been demoted and sent packing. He crossed that line in athletics that makes it an absolute no-no to use the tools of your trade as a weapon, whether it's a ball thrown at a velocity high enough to be potentially deadly, or a baseball bat used for a purpose other than intended. (The more senior among us may remember former San Francisco Giants pitcher Juan Marichal infamously taking his bat to Los Angeles Dodger catcher Johnny Roseboro's skull in 1965).

It matters not that Castillo apparently missed his intended target. Collateral damage happens when good judgment disappears. We might add that Castillo already had hit two batters just in the first inning of the Chiefs' most memorable game of the year. It would seem he has some maturing to do.

But this brawl was disappointing on multiple levels. The adults in charge let matters get out of hand, starting with Chiefs acting manager Carmelo Martinez appearing to initiate the fireworks by shoving Dayton's manager, then with the umpires who did not intervene early enough, then with the fans whose profanity and taunts of the players could be heard on the amateur video that has made the rounds of the Internet.
Certainly suspensions are warranted by the commissioner's office.

The major league clubs involved here — the Chicago Cubs for the Chiefs, the Cincinnati Reds for Dayton (which had eight players initially ejected to the Chiefs seven) may have something to say, as well.

It's a shame, because otherwise this has been a banner season for the division-leading Chiefs, who with several promising players represent Peoria Tuesday at Wrigley Field under the leadership of their usual manager, Ryne Sandberg. He was absent for the Dayton game because he was in Cooperstown, N.Y., attending a Hall of Fame ceremony.

We'd like to think things might have turned out differently if Sandberg had been present. We trust that he has impressed upon his players that there cannot be a repeat, that their first responsibility is not as ballplayers but as good citizens or proud products of wherever they're from. Reportedly four times this season the Chiefs collectively have rushed onto the field in response to on-the-field altercations. Four times is enough.

We appreciate that these are young people, that emotion sometimes gets the best of them in the heat of competition, that they tend to be from places other than central Illinois. But once they put on that Chiefs uniform, they are ambassadors for Peoria whether they like it or not.